The Burthen of a Smitten Soul

A woman in fancy clothes mows the lawn

That no man has mowed before her. Pray,

Would any man mow the lawn of a woman

Who mowed her own lawn in fancy clothes? Oh!

Drink the tea, for Christ's sake, before it grows

Sickly cold from being pressed against your cold, cold heart.

It will die,

Ere the woman out in front is finished mowing the lawn.

Her fancy clothes have already begun showing signs

Of wear and soil. Tell me,

For you are so wise in these matters,

If mowing one's lawn is a suitable surrogate for an evening walk?

“Don't doubt the doughnut,”

Said the man on the street corner,

Smoking leaves of lettuce through an old-fashioned pipe.

How far away does he see Death standing, I wonder?

Is he on the opposite street corner?

Is he coming slowly the nearer?

Is he standing three feet away from the man's wrinkled face,

Which gives off from time to time

A length of his life in puffs of lettuce smoke?

Is he a reflection of the man's wrinkled face

In the mirror?

But then who is he?

Icicled pieces of paper fall from the sky

Like paper rain frozen in the wrath of winter.

The heart wrought of ice melts on the slightest touch;

But where is the heart, if the heart is ice,

And the ice has melted under the warm hand

Of a person not of the winter,

Nor of the summer,

Nor of the intervening states of mind,

But of all of these, and more? Lo!

The hitherto warm hand has become

Frozen in the ice from

The hitherto frozen heart,

Never to feel again.

Let us stare, my dear, for they say staring is rude.

Ungentle looks cast at gentlefolk can only be rude.

Let us stare at the women walking down the street,

With bags of dried grass under their sinewy arms,

Dressed in fancy clothes besoiled by the fruit of their exertions

Under the suns of morrows we have never known,

Known though we have similar morrows in other lands,

Where the kindly dispositions of the people at whom we stared

Made the act of staring a difficult thing. Here,

However, there is no reproof for our staring.

There is only a pile of dried grass,

Lying in wait to be litten; and when litten,

To lick at our sinful bodies, and toss our violence into the ashes.